Client-Agency Relationship is a Two-Way Street (but clients always have right-of-way)

“When people tell me their client ‘needs’ to understand or ‘needs’ to do something, you know what I tell them? That the only thing any client ‘needs’ to do is pay their bills.”

A wise mentor of mine shared that motto with me early in my days transitioning from journalism to agency life, and the pragmatic wisdom behind it stuck. He’s right, of course. We on the agency side often grumble behind our smiles about all the ways we wish our clients could understand better how we work or what we really need to help them achieve PR success, when it really is part of our job to figure out how to work with what they give us. It’s also part of our job to help educate clients – from the very start of our engagement with them – understand how we can better work together to achieve mutual success, and to not sugar-coat the time and effort on their parts it might take to get there. The bottom line is that most successful PR campaigns involve a client whose senior leadership is fully engaged in the PR process and are willing to invest his or her time in the agency relationship and media relations.

Several of our current consumer clients illustrate the two-way street principle in action. With national real estate brokerage ZipRealty, for example, CEO Pat Lashinsky will hop on a plane or take a phone interview on a few moments’ notice for a national, top-tier opportunity. Demonstrating flexibility, client Jingle Networks recently took the agency’s suggestions on product enhancements and new features to “create news” that have helped increase our success rate at securing coverage. They have also trusted in us to shift a portion of their monthly retainer into social media activities to boost WOM marketing to drive call volume.  And then sometimes it’s just the little things that matter. Kimpton CEO Mike Depatie, a busy guy by all accounts, not only personally downloads our team every year with the commercial real estate lay of the land to inform our pitches and squeezes in every business media request we throw his way during a two-day conference, he also remembers to send a warm thank you note along to the team for successes achieved along the way. Did I mention how much we love working with Kimpton?

Want to become a similarly beloved client to your agency – and more importantly, achieve stellar results for your PR program? Here are a few suggestions:  

• Realize PR takes work and time, and commit to it (i.e., don’t back off when it seems like a bit of a pain).  
•  Trust your firm’s recommendations and judgment, particularly with media relations, where we live and breathe.
• Stay flexible. Not every press release or pitch works, and sometimes you need to switch gears, particularly when a breaking news story provides an unforeseen opportunity or competitive activity necessitates a change in direction.
• Realize and respect journalist deadlines. For agencies, relationships are our bread and butter, and burning bridges by turning down interviews that are inconveniently timed or not getting information to a reporter in time hurts us as well as your future odds at coverage.

– Aimee Grove

What We’re Reading Today

The “Like it or not, if you’re a brand, you’re a publisher” edition

The Guardian UK: Media140: How Twitter has affected brands

Some excellent thoughts on how brands have reacted to the challenge of our “publishing society”

Copyblogger – 7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School

“New” media requires a new style of writing

Mashable: 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips

a.k.a. you’ve got to have something to say now that there are plenty of places to say it.

Destination CRM: Finding the Value of Findability

Why produce content if no one can find it?

- Allison & Partners

Walking the (Green) Walk

With six years’ experience encouraging San Francisco Bay Area residents to reduce driving for the “Spare the Air” campaign, Allison & Partner’s Social Impact team decided it was time flex its social marketing muscle for an internal initiative: composting. As part of our green business certification, we installed a compost bin and wanted to be sure it was well-utilized by the staff. Composting is an important sustainable behavior because our cities’ landfills are bursting at the seams, and food scraps and lawn clippings left to decompose in trash heaps produce methane, a greenhouse gas, and therefore contribute to global warming.

We kicked off our campaign with a contest in which staffers were pitted against each other to sort a pile of garbage into three categories: trash, recycle and compost. With “Jeopardy” theme music in the background and buzzers to signify right or wrong choices, the race was a fun, not preachy, way to introduce the concept. Next, we used the sorted materials to create three-dimensional posters that hang above our trash, recycling and composting bins to prompt staffers to sort their garbage and do so correctly.  To keep people accountable for composting behavior, we created a Pepe Le Pew ‘award’ that is placed on the desk of anyone who fails to take the compost to an outdoor drop bin on his/her assigned day.

Besides its environmental benefits, the campaign has helped boost employee morale and even inspired a few staffers to institute the practice at home, giving them a head start in complying with San Francisco’s new mandatory composting law that took effect yesterday, October 21. To keep the momentum going in the office, we’re unveiling new elements like composting bins in the bathroom for paper towels, and a weekly compost pop quiz in our morning meeting where anyone – including CEO Scott Allison – is fair game.

- Courtney Newman

What We’re Reading Today…

Martha Stewart touts value of multichannel via DM News

Report: Facebook, Twitter See Growth; MySpace in Decline via Digital Media Wire

Social Climbing: Luxury Fashion Brands Must Embrace Social Media via Forbes

Mary Meeker: Economy Is Recovering, Mobile Is Exploding, And The iPhone Is Awesome. via TechCrunch

Interactive Ad Bureau Decries New FTC Blogger Guidelines via Digital Media Wire

The Blogger Rules – an object lesson in journalistic integrity

Earlier today the Federal Trade Commission released its long-awaited update to its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.  The old rules were last revised in 1980, long before many of today’s social media experts, and the entire Best Buy Twelpforce, were born!

Effective December 1, 2009, the new rules are already receiving a tremendous amount of attention, with hundreds of social media navelgazers weighing in on the undying importance of the “new” rule that requires bloggers to disclose payment for any reviews.

Many have focused on the monetary penalty for consistently violating the infraction, which is $11,000 after a cease and desist order is filed.  That detail is not actually anywhere to be found in the text of the updated guides, but is certainly something bloggers should weigh in their overall approach to accepting endorsements.

The bulk of the upfront to the document refers back to comments offered by the public after the document was submitted for review in November of last year.  Interestingly, several commenters apparently argued that “there was no need for the Guides to be revised at all, and that the 1980 Guides, combined with continued industry self-regulation and the Commission’s case-by-case law enforcement, would adequately balance the needs of advertisers and the interest of consumer protection.”

“Others argued,” the document continues “that the evidence in the record did not support the proposed changes, that the proposed revisions to the Guides could have a negative affect [sic] on emerging media channels and impede the ability of businesses to communicate with consumers.”

Clearly any rules that date back almost 30 years need to be looked at closely.  It’s often instructive to look at this through the lens of history, though.  Though the first payola indictment occurred in 1960, with legendary DJ Alan Freed fined for taking $2500 in what he deemed to be a “token of gratitude.”  The scandal cost him his career, and the crack down impacted greatly the record companies’ ability to influence what music was played.

Payola didn’t begin with rock and roll, though.  It dates back to Vaudeville and the very origins of radio.  As soon as there was a medium to exploit, unscrupulous broadcasters were on the take.

Newspaper followed a similar path.  From the [undisclosed] party affiliations of James Franklin’s New England Courant which broadly espoused party platforms to Pulitzer and Hearst’s yellow journalism, advertisers’ needs and wants were often in vivid display in the early days of print as well.

Throughout all of these periods, however, ethical actors rose to the fore.  Franklin’s brother Benjamin created the iconic “Silence Dogood” to expose the hypocrisy running rampant in colonial America.  FM Radio emerged as a force once DJ’s were freed up to share their own tastes with America, proving a much more interesting route than the spoon fed music of the masses.

The same will come of blogging.  People will gravitate towards the most objective, most interesting writing, and will see through the fluff.  It’s obvious when someone is on the take, and those with the most integrity, like Walt Mossberg & Kara Swisher, whose journalistic roots inform the entirety of their blog AllThingsD, go to great lengths to eliminate snuff out even the slightest hint of a conflict.

Bloggers are not entirely to be blamed for the actions that have led the FTC to wake from a nearly 30-year slumber.  The temptatation to be bought (without full disclosure) exists largely because corporations have seized an opportunity in time.  This is amplified by the fact that most bloggers do this job in their spare time, and many on a volunteer basis.

With the emerging forms of media (many surely to be outmoded in the next 30 years) so prominent in our lives and leading to the democritazation of publishing, it’s not hard to see a day when these rules could apply to an even larger audience.  While the notion of a self-regulating system is idealistic and optimistic, I do think this legal backstop was necessary and will provide the framework for ever broader acceptance of social media.

It’s a very simple litmus test, taken again, directly from the text:  “…in disseminating positive statements about a product or service, is the speaker: (1) acting solely independently, in which case there is no endorsement, or (2) acting on behalf of the advertiser or its agent, such that the speaker’s statement is an “endorsement” that is part of an overall marketing campaign?”

Those who don’t know better will not be in business long.  And those among us who don’t question what we read, well…  Let’s just say William Randolph Hearst has a war to sell you.

- Jonathan Heit

What We’re Reading Today…

Facebook Is the Most Valuable Source of Traffic [Stats] via Mashable

21 Must-Follow Tips For Optimizing Time Spent In Social Media via Online Marketing Blog

Macs and PCs found shacking up via CNET

Soon, Bloggers Must Give Full Disclosure via The New York Times

Letterman Takes a Page out of Tylenol Playbook

It was 1982 and Tylenol was faced with one of the largest corporate crisis in history when seven people died in Chicago from taking a tampered Tylenol product.  Johnson & Johnson received high accolades for the way they handled the situation.  They moved quickly.  They took responsibility and corrective action and communicated clearly with all of their constituents.

David Letterman found himself in his own crisis situation this past week.  While certainly not anywhere near the level of Tylenol (No one died here, although Dave might have wished he had), Letterman took a similar approach to the one by J&J almost 30 years ago.  He stepped up, took responsibility and apologized.

America can be a funny place when it comes to scandals.  We can put up with a lot.  We believe in giving people second chances.  We understand that we’re all human and prone to mistakes and lapses in judgment.  If someone apologizes and doesn’t place blame on others, we will stand by them.

What America won’t stand for though is a liar and a cheat.  Sorry Bernie Madoff, there will be no forgiveness in store for you this year.  We want people to take responsibility for their actions and in exchange a second chance will be given.  Exxon never got this point after their Valdez crisis.  They didn’t follow the Tylenol model.

Dave, we will see you after the news and I hope your wife is as understanding as America.

- Scott Allison

Out of sight, out of mind.

It’s a simple concept, but one worth special attention for LinkedIn users looking to promote their businesses.

I’m a big fan of LinkedIn. I use it for competitive intelligence and to research prospective clients. I use it to check out candidates we’re interviewing and as a “virtual business card” that provides people with whom I meet with more info on my background.

Until recently, however, I haven’t used LinkedIn’s “update” feature much. But I plan to change my ways. With “update,” you can give your connections a Twitter-like 140 character view of what you’re up to at the moment. Are you speaking at a conference? Did you just write a provocative blog post? Did your firm win a high profile client? “Update” gives you a chance to blow your own horn.

I’m currently connected to 888 people via LinkedIn. But how many of these people do I speak with regularly? Very few. Posting regular updates will help me to stay in front of this audience. And this way, when they’re looking to hire a new PR firm or to change jobs, they’ll be more likely to think of Allison & Partners.

It’s a simple idea. But success is in the execution. So if we’re not connected yet, reach out to me at http://www.linkedin.com/in/philcarpenter. I’ll promise to keep you posted on my continuing corporate adventures. I hope you’ll do the same.

– Phil Carpenter